As everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.
        — Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

My hair was the color of carrots,
which combined with my freckles
& milky white skin that burned
like a vampire’s on contact with the sun,
marked me as the enemy on the playground.
I’d rather be dead than red on the head!
To point out that my hair was orange,
actually, only made things worse.
It took me a while to notice that redhead girls
got a free ride. They were celebrated
as little firecrackers, or adorably zany
like Lucille Ball. As the only redhead boy
in my class, I was the changeling, devil, freak.
Even my daddy joked that my real father
was the milkman. I never laughed at that.

After a few years of cute Richie Cunningham
& bonny Prince Harry, conditions improved
for my burning-bush brethren. The word ginger,
with its connotations of healing & deliciousness,
entered the language like a balm, coaxing 
the haters to hate a little less. But by then
it was too late for me, my hair gone gray.
Paradigm shifts are boats I always miss.
At least now I can look at photos of myself as a boy
& and think maybe I wasn’t so ugly, after all.